


Runs in The Family

by Aurora Cee (SC182)



Series: Family Values [2]
Category: American Horror Story: Murder House, Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character(s) of Color, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Family Secrets, Homophobic Language, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Racist Language, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SC182/pseuds/Aurora%20Cee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This afternoon, she would give her son his due and use what resources she had beyond her wit and mother’s love to bring him back to their small family fold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runs in The Family

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Property of Universal, Justin Lin, Gary S. Thompson, Ryan Murphy, Brad Fulchuk, and Fox Studios. So the characters aren't mine; I'm just borrowing them for a moment.
> 
> Referenced Items: Miss Congeniality (2000)  
> T.I.'s [Swagger Like Us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNfMHFp54I)
> 
> Spoilers: All American Horror Story: Murder House and general FATF universe spoilers.
> 
> Warning: Constance's casual racism and homophobia
> 
> A/N: 1)This story involves a car accident leading to Brian being incapacitated and injured. The original story was written in 2011 and this is the sequel. So, just a warning to prevent any readers from being triggered in light of Paul Walker's unfortunate passing. 
> 
> 2) The inspiration for this story is once again Brian's vague backstory and Constance's missing fourth child in American Horror Story: Murder House. 
> 
> 3) Thank [Buzzfeed and young Rob Lowe](http://www.buzzfeed.com/aj8/27-flawless-and-perfect-photos-of-young-rob-lowe-cfe3) for further inspiration.  
> 4) A refresher on [Constance Langdon's greatest hits](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/constance-langdon)  
> 5) Stealth crossover: If you find the line and make a guess, you'll probably be right about Brian's father's origins.

She put the pitcher of iced tea in the center of the table and ran her hand over the linen surface in order to snuff out a few stubborn wrinkles. She did it once, twice, and finally became satisfied after the third sweep of her hands.

“There--” Constance said, satisfaction infused her voice like sweet spring honey. “Just right. Just like he’ll remember.”

The smile that cut across her face was just for her, as she finished perfecting her finest showing of hospitality. Constance hoped to evoke more than good will from her long absent kin; she wanted to bring back those aching memories of being so close yet so far from the reach of one’s own. How her heart had suffered as she’d watched her baby float in and out of her life, never able to say the words that would have kept him close. Perhaps she had saved him by doing as she’d been instructed. But the pain she’d endured for saving three at the expense of one was not something she would forgive or forget.

There was a plate stacked mountain high with delicately cut brownie squares, each masterfully decorated with swirls of peanut butter and nuts. Just the way her boy had always liked them during his visits. Constance hoped the layers of sweetness would be the parley needed to fully enter her son’s life. Or, be the nestled seed that caused their family’s roots to extend deeply and flourish once more.

Constance stood back from the table and once again admired her hard work and clapped her hands signaling an end to her toils, abuzz with triumph despite the silence of the kitchen. Her eyes traveled upward to rest on the ceiling and imagined that through the layers of concrete, wood, and paint that her dear sweet Michael was just as she’d left him—at rest with better angels than she herself could offer.

Her mother had always said that patience was just hard work come to fruition, and all her years of anguish and sacrifice were set to finally mean _something._ Something special in just under five minutes: Her baby—her boy—was finally coming home.

The only shame of it was that her boy wouldn’t be fully home, not really, because the house where he’d been conceived and born was full of too many surprises for this occasion. Full of too many unwanted guests that had no sense of decency or affection for private family matters.

Tate hadn’t been at all thrilled when she’d told him of his brother’s homecoming.

With his eyes that could shift from soft to hard like leather desiccated and worn to frayed strands, he’d narrowed them and spat on her happiness as he was often wont to do.

“Don’t bring your bastard here.” Tate had said, so sullenly yet forthright. There was no apology to follow, not when he crossed his arms and sagged into the wallpaper to resume his ominous sulk. “You should’ve left the bastard where you found him.”

Her hand had moved lightning quick and sliced him across the face, but she hadn’t stopped there. She’d cupped his cheek, embracing the fleeting warmth of skin that would disappear far too soon. If that warmth had remained, she would’ve dug deep and furrowed her fingertips into Tate’s pale cheeks. Instead, Constance soothed what she could, letting the anger in her voice anchor them into the moment. “Don’t call him that.” Her eyes flashed, dark and angry. “ _Never_ call him that.” Constance scolded gently, stroking his cheek. “He’s your brother. Your flesh and your blood. The only one besides me and--”she always stopped herself before going further. Tate had already done so many horrible things, lest he do something more at the urging her foolish tongue. “He and I are all that you’ve got, my precious boy.” She kissed Tate’s blond hair. “One person does not make a family. A little graciousness would take you far, even here.” Constance tacked on wistfully as she pointed to patterned walls of house that had seen so much despite their constant changing face.

She hadn’t tolerated in-fighting between her children when the house had been theirs and she certainly wouldn’t allow bad blood to boil now.

For the briefest of seconds, she had a glimpse of her sweet boy again. The one who played with his dear sister and made her laugh no matter how much she may have wanted to cry. Her dear first born.

Tate leaned into her touch and sighed, “Then he’s already damned like the rest of us, isn’t he?” He looked away, a flicker of movement catching across the corner of Constance’s eye but a permanent distraction for him. “There’s no luck for us. Nothing that we can escape. Just the same shit, different life and now he’s walking right into it.” Then the fleeting glimpse was gone, faded from sight like a hummingbird’s shadow. “For your sake and his, you should stay as far away as possible. Lie to him like you lied about everything else but keep him away from here. Otherwise, you’ll see just how far you can stretch that one-person family.”

Constance knew Tate was right, of course. One could never be too sure who one would meet in the manor’s quiet halls. She knew perfectly well what resided under her other roof, and looking at the high wall clock, she welcomed the two hour reprieve for conversation and reunion. Little Michael‘s excitement for meeting his uncle had spilled over into giving his nanny fits and resulted in a hard nap. The girl was lucky that Constance had given her the afternoon off and paid for her stitches; she’d been warned that Michael’s baby teeth were sharp. And with his nascent curiosity, the girl couldn’t possibly blame Michael for his desire to taste just about anything that came close to his mouth.

Constance hoped Brian would be more open to suggestion. It had taken some time—a true exercise in practicing patience for the two of them to be alone. There was always someone hovering: Pearce, the cute sister, and the big, scowling Eye-Talian who seemed to have appointed himself Brian’s de facto bodyguard.

Constance sniffed indignantly at the mire suggestion that Brian would need protection from his family. From his flesh and blood? Never.

Of all the nerve, she’d bristled.

The last person Brian needed to be guarded from was her. Mr. Bald, Bulging, and Brooding, on the other hand, acted like he had an allergies to shirts that fit correctly and demonstrating even the slightest hint of civility in the face of gentility. He didn’t trust her apparently, nor she him, so they were on common ground of a sorts. But if Mr. Toretto thought he would stand in the way of Constance reuniting her family, then she’d show him just what she did to bad dogs.

Speaking of bitches that barked too loud: Her recent encounter with half of Burt and Ernie hadn’t engendered new feelings of peace and prosperity towards Chad, not one iota. He’d found her shortly after her talk with Tate.

Just swanned down the stairs, lazily dragging his hand over the polished wood of the bannister like he still owned the place and snapped his head about to look down at her like a big preening peacock. Constance had always assumed there’d been feathers in his closet, because to just have them lying around would have been too on the nose to be plainly tacky. Even Big Bird had a small modicum of taste, so she assumed Chad would, too.

“May I help you?” She’d inquired with enough ice in her tone to cause frostbite.

Chad smirked, his neat bushy eyebrows hitching upward so sharply, she could see him clawing at ideas. “The grapevine is all aflutter, Connie. It seems we should be making room for more.”

“Constance,” she corrected and smiled back harshly, all teeth with the faintest trace of lip. “And who’s chattering for the cuckoo birds to hear?”

“Doesn’t matter who’s chattering. There’s. Just. Chatter. Frankly, I thought all your secrets had been brought to light just like your roots. But now, I’m hearing that there’s another Langdon that’s actually living and breathing. My, my, you were a busy girl during your heyday, weren’t you? You must be familiar with looking up at every ceiling in this place.”

Constance did not care for his filthy implication but had come to expect no less from Chad. She gracefully stepped toe to toe with him and folded her arms over her chest as she regarded him as if he actually mattered, in any sense of the word.

She breathed calmly and fully, just enjoying the simple fact that she could. “I find it funny that my intentions and mistakes could reward me with something you could never have—children. And all of _my children_ , as different and singularly unique that they are, will always be mine. No test tube magic could give them what I’ve given them.”

The smug look on his face dropped and his mouth pursed in a condescending pucker. “ Cosmic injustice aside, I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one with a packed closet. Finally, you’re giving us something more worthwhile than your paisley dresses, beehive wigs, and psychopathic offspring to keep us entertained.”

“Find your entertainment elsewhere.” Tate had been right about this house. She couldn’t bring Brian here. A deal was a deal no matter how long since she’d signed on the dotted line. “Don’t think about him. Don’t look at him or I swear…”

Chad huffed out a derisive chuckle. Threats where wasted on the dead and they both knew it.

“That’s going to be rather… _hard_. At least, this one plays for my team or at least his boyfriend does, or so I hear. He’s got himself a roughneck, huh? Well, at least this one has good taste. I wonder if he’ll let us play.” Chad mused. “Young, blond, and riding with rough trade, I like it. I think I may have seen a movie with that theme once.”

Constance leveled a stern finger at his chest, stabbing his sternum with the point of her nails. So much like claws, just like a mama cat on the prowl. “I swear upon all that is holy and good if you try anything— _anything_ , I’ll find a way to send you swaying back on your heels to hell permanently. I won’t use that little wives tales that Violet tried. I’ll use hellfire, holy water, and I’ll lay these walls down to a pile of bricks first.” She punched his chest with her nail. “With you still trapped here forever, destined to roam the open expanses of a concrete parking lot. So, try me if you must, and I’ll show you what this beehive can do. ”

Rolling his eyes, Chad removed her hand from his chest, cradling it so gently before dropping it like a hot stone. “And you’ll get me and my little dog, too. I know the drill--all you witches say the same thing. So save the threats, Lady Macbeth, and ride off on your broom, because you’re keeping us from the show.”

“I’m choosing to celebrate life—a thing that you so obviously do not have anymore. Have fun swaying in the wind.”

She slammed the door on the sound of Chad’s garroting laughter. She’d taken the warning for what it was and set her mind towards brighter paths.

Here and now, she waited at the window, looking for her boy’s triumphant return to where he was always meant to be.

A black car, long with chiseled sides crept along the shoulder of the road until it stopped before the drive. Constance’s heart leaped into her throat, pounding frantically as she made out her boy’s silhouette and sank somewhat at seeing the second body beside him. _No matter_ , she thought, as she pressed a steady hand to her immaculate upsweep of honey-hued pin curls that were a perfect match to Brian’s before someone had lost sense and shorn them. Constance knew just how to handle an unexpected guest, just leave them drowning under the weight of true Southern civility.

As a former Miss Virginia, she shifted her body into a well familiar position and armed herself with the poise that awarded her titles, crowns, and suitors alike. Constance straightened her back once more and repeated a stalwart, “Smilers wear a crown, losers wear a frown.”

Despite her dark thoughts, she felt the warm embrace of satisfaction like creamy butter melting over a fresh batch of biscuits as she descended the steps and neared the big black car.

Constance tucked up the smile on her face into a reasonable look—one that was less puckered at the corners from just the sight of Toretto emerging from the car in front of her house. It was a compromise she supposed, seeing Toretto’s indelible and undesired face in order to see her precious son.

She stepped quickly down the walk and gave the non-existent traffic a look, one that conveyed her contempt for the unexpected change in pace the night her Adelaide was taken from her. No matter of street nor car nor East Los Angeles gutter trash would separate her from any of her children again.

Toretto did his best to acknowledge her as a gentleman should: with a small, measured tooth-free grin; an admirable feat for a man who seemed only capable of three possible variants of the same expression.

Her pace increased, though not so quickly as to be rushing—a lady never rushed—and rounded the back of the car to watch as Toretto opened the door for her boy. Her son looked miles better than before but still many roads away from being his usual handsome self.

“You’re here!” Constance crowed. “Let me help, let me help,” she insisted as Brian pulled the pair of tall crutches from the backseat and used them to lever himself up and out of the car.

“I got it,” he said, ever so honest and already smiling. He looked up at the house and then back at the looming façade behind them. “I still think it’s funny that you decided to move and just went across the street.”

Toretto loomed at Brian’s back as he began to propel himself forward on the crutches. He remained fastened to Brian’s shadow for the entire length of the walk up to her porch, offering the occasional hand as needed, though Brian, as stubborn as her always, refused and continued on his way.

She opened the front door to her home. “It is not the house that makes a home, Brian, but the memories inside the walls that do. And I must say that that house has more memories than I can stand sometimes.”

The look that Brian gave her was so understanding that it pulled at her heart and she so suddenly ached. Toretto, too, seemed affected by her words, and she wondered what they’d shared in their association that made them know the weight of being unceasingly haunted.

She had to touch him, even for the briefest moment. She needed that connection. So she gave Brian’s sturdy shoulders a pat, just a small penance of affection that would have to do for the time being. How she could have ever done wrong by her boy was so beyond her. The only one that was pure and worth something was the one that she released to wolves of her family and the soiled streets of this city.

“Follow me to the kitchen, I might have been a little zealous about my preparations for this afternoon. Doesn’t matter though, you’re here and I’m sure we can do something about those preparations indeed.”

Toretto looked confused and probably not for the first time. She caught the small look that Brian and Dominic shared, a promise to explain later; though later should be more like never when it came to sharing family business.

Instead of saying anything more, she led them into the kitchen and the seats around her gallantly prepared table, topped with a pitcher of iced sweet tea and with more sugar laced confections than a Southern Baptist social.

“Have a seat, get a drink, something to eat, whatever you like.” She clapped her hands together. “I’m just so glad you’re here.” Constance declared while reaching out and stopped short of placing her hands on Brian’s head to ruffle the formerly beautiful curls that had been his signature.

He would have allowed it, she knew. After talking in the hospital upon his awakening, she already knew that Brian was amenable to repairing their relationship and allowing them the opportunity of a fresh start. This afternoon, she would give her son his due and use what resources she had beyond her wit and mother’s love to bring him back to their small family fold.

Out of polite necessity, she inquired of Toretto’s family. “I trust your family is still well, Dominic? Your sister was so lovely and sweet when we met.” All those sentiments were very much correct, though Constance would have greatly preferred that Mia’s sweetness be kept out of a fifty mile radius of her son.

“We’re good and better now that Brian’s out of the hospital and back on his feet.”

She served up the plate of lemon squares. A recipe so good that even her dog of an ex-husband came to heel when given a few. “I do thank you for bringing him again. I hope we’re not keeping you from anything. I wouldn’t want you to neglect other obligations.” She really hoped he was--neglecting his obligations. In fact, Constance had hoped that Toretto would find something to do for a long time, so that she and Brian could have the privacy to have some much needed family discussions.

He accepted the small plate with lemon squares and replied lightly in his deep timbre, “Not at all, I told Brian I could stay as long as _he_ wanted me to.” Which she heard loud and clearly. If it was Brian’s decision that he be here, then she’d prove why it wasn’t necessary for him to stay.

“Hmm.” She buzzed about moving plates and the like with her back towards them now, and schooled her expression. It was so easy to let the devil get the best of one’s self, and as for the rest of the afternoon, she needed to appear as if she was in the full embrace of all her graces.

She placed a few more trays of this and that on the table, mindful to avoid Brian’s eager to help hands. “Well eat up, boys. It’s been a long time since I had two hearty men such as yourselves in this house, so I wanted to make sure that neither of you walked away hungry.” A memory of her young lover and his delicate hands upon her as she lied on the tabletop darted painlessly through her mind. She reminded herself that strays often took flight, only the simple tried to control wild things.

Brian laughed and eyed the multitude of plates and trays seeming to fill the entirety of the table’s surface and few of the counters around the kitchen. “I don’t think that will be a problem. Seriously, I think this, like, is more food than we had at Thanksgiving. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen this much food.”

Constance used the opportunity of topping off their glasses to fully prepare her opening strike. “Awe, that’s nice. Maybe this year, I can help you all add to your day of bountiful blessings.”

Brian’s soft utterance of “Maybe,” felt like a genuine promise of yes. “We’ve got time til then anyway to figure it out.” He looked at Toretto, almost shyly.

“Right,” Toretto added from the opposite end of her table. “There’s always room for one more at 1327.”

Constance took a seat at Brian’s left, the irony of which wasn’t lost on her—close to his injuries, close to his heart; the way a mother should always be.

“I owe you much, Brian. Not only as a member of this family but more importantly as your mother.”

Brian disagreed with a gentle shake of his head, still too shockingly short for her taste. “No, you don’t…don’t owe me anything. I’m not here for a confession.”

Back in the hospital, after Brian had awoken, he had been kind to her but firm after her declaration of their true relationship. He’d said, while giving her the same blue-eyed honesty that had enthralled her so when it was given by his father, “I won’t call you Mom. The future might change things, but it’s still too weird for me to think of you as anything of other than my Auntie Constance.”

Accepting his stance was the only avenue provided to her at the time.

The future had a way of changing more than the tides, and Constance knew she had the power to make a tremendous whirlpool. Her response, just as sweet and true, “Well, my dear child, it would be unfair to expect anything less.”

So here and now, she grasped Brian’s hand between hers and savored the warm heft of his rough hands, giving attention to all parts—scars, lines, the clean bed of his blunt nails—every bit a part of him that she’d lost over the years.

He’d been as busy as a bee as a child, always getting into shenanigans with Pearce, hands dirty and face painted up with dust and grime but happy as a pig in mud. Back then, she watched with stars in her eyes and pain in her heart, and now she had him all to herself without anyone’s interference. Mostly.

The truth tended to be a gray beast, low and slinking through the brush of consciousness until it was fed and fat. A beast that Constance could control with a feather down smile and a maternal touch. “This is the least that I can give you.”

Brian began to protest but she held fast and cut him off. “So many people lack so many things and it’s hard for them to realize that the most valuable asset a person can acquire isn’t having two nickels to rub together; it’s having history. And I have been so remiss, as was my dear sister, in not giving you what was rightfully yours.”

“And what d’you want to give me?”

“Let me tell you about your father.” And she saw the star burst in his eyes and knew that she had him .

* * *

 

Her drink was neat, golden, and top shelf.

Just the way she liked it.

Just the way that she’d been taught.

Constance Langdon nee Clayborn was a woman who knew many things and would do many more to get what she wanted. Tonight was a matter of obtaining not what she wanted but what she needed.

Constance found herself in the Ritz Club looking for her saving grace, and among the high-backed stools, dimly lit table lamps, and retro elegance, she hoped she would find it. Club Ritz offered her the selectivity that was abandoned in the discotheque scene. And wouldn’t she look silly in a discotheque, dolled up in sequins and garish makeup like an aged go-go girl? She wasn’t as young as she used to be but not old; in need, yes—but certainly not desperate.

Stepping foot inside an aforementioned den of strobe lights, sweat and hip gyrating iniquity would have been like trawling the dredges of swampy marsh with a battered and moth-eaten shrimping net. Constance might have been brought low but she was always above bowing and scraping anybody’s dredges.

When she decided to undertake this mission, she knew that it was a matter of starting fresh. Her old club was out. Carrying her head high was as easy as breathing; a skill she’d learned well before she could string two words together and spell _M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I_ without blinking or stuttering. Rather it was hard not suffocating on the faux sympathetic glances and empathetic hugs and kisses extended to her by her fellow ladies of leisure, who tittered like old hens in a tizzy because a cat slunk into the coop. No, they’d be silent to her face and squawk behind her back, all falling over themselves to dissect the wheres and whys of her mister going off to greener pastures with her maid or a bevy of young, pretty things with breasts like watermelons and not enough sense to outwit a field mouse.

Mister Langdon had gone off to greener pastures, all right. Greener pastures all over Los Angeles County.

The husbands of her dear friends, on the other hand, circled like sharks in the water, thinking her at the end of her rope—three children, missing husband, and no job. For all they looked, they did not see.

So here she was at the Ritz with a glass of top shelf liquor— aged Kentucky Bourbon, she was a southern lady after all, and kept a keen eye on her surroundings. This place still had old time standards of class and sophistication and, best of all, money was not the only requisite for entry. Breeding was the _it_ factor; as the old folks said and one could pay for school but couldn’t by class in a place like this.

As Constance watched the room, couples well-matched and dressed to the highest heights of bourgeois elegance took to the gleaming hardwood floor. The songstress crooned a melancholy tune, describing the perils of love for sale in a velvety alto, not as smooth as Fitzgerald or either of the Sinatras but it was a serviceable rendition.

The melody poured on, Constance could almost hear Big Daddy’s voice. Her father, a starched and pressed military man that eventually traded the brass and buttons of his uniform for the cool linens and Panama hats of a man of politics and enterprise, had been a true southern gentlemen, who raised his daughters to have the same unwavering rectitude and stringent sense of propriety. He was the type of man one would expect to have a platoon of sons; instead he was graced with a gaggle of girls, loved them just as fiercely and spoke to them as forthright as he would with any man.

Big Daddy taught her how to shoot, how to keep her eye on the target, how to stand her ground and how to not spill a drop of her drink despite being in a fit of pique.

She could hear him now saying, “Constance, Vodka is for Bolsheviks. Whiskey burns the throat and puts hair on the chest. Beer is for bricklayers and sharecroppers. ‘Shine is for shit-kickers and poor white trash. But Bourbon means business.”

She laughed then with drink in hand and her hands were just as steady and true, not a drop wasted. One of her biggest regrets of her many.

It was like a moment out of the cinema. That singular point in time where the world was drowned out by the sound of an enchanting tune that was unforgettable and impossible to replicate. Across a sea of people they became the center of the other’s universe and succumbed to the most natural force of all: attraction.

She remembered thinking he was like some old time movie star or the Adonis of myth. A seemingly perfect man that she’d been waiting for so patiently. He set his gaze upon her and strode across the crowded dance floor, each step falling impossibly loudly over the irrepressible tune. He eyed her like she was the sun and she, at him, like the moon.

When he stood before her, he simply said, “ Michael.”

“Constance.”

“Will you say yes?”

With all her soul, she would. “Yes.”

She swore his eyes flashed gold like summer rye in the dim flicker of candle light.

She didn’t fall in bed with him that night but three nights later and every night thereafter. Michael, she learned, was capable of amazing things, feats of his body that undid her, his mind that amazed her, and his spirit that left her uplifted.

He was the only man she’d ever known that had looked at her children and called each one, “Beautiful”.

Michael gave her back her home. No conditions, he’d said, just a gift for her and her family.

He gave her a wink and smile, and she had a thought, _Maybe, he’ll be my savior_?

His smile stretched outwards, incredibly smooth and assured, as if he’d heard her thought and answered it with a look alone. _I’m your salvation._

She’d had enough children to know when another was on the way. She knew the exact day that her youngest was conceived. It was the summer solstice.

After she delivered her news, hoping that it would bring the proposition of marriage to ahead. Michael kissed her flat belly and smiled into her skin, “My perfect boy.”

Two months later, Michael was gone, leaving her the house next door and enough money to live comfortably as long as she didn’t return to her real home. It was a bargain she struck; the price was her last born.

Her bastard boy. Her perfect boy.

 

* * *

 

“We have come so far in terms of social permissiveness but some things could not be abided. So my sister Charity took you and raised you as her own. We had not taken into account that her husband would have been so cowardly as to leave before the ink was dry on the adoption papers.”

Toretto interrupted her the steady stream of her words by bluntly intruding. “And you never thought to say anything sooner?”

Constance directed a tight smile Toretto’s way. “My boy’s been a tough one to track down in the recent past.”

Brian looked rocked, like the foundation of his world was slipping beneath his feet and he’d fall head first into the ether. “One dad gone, and that sucks. But two dads gone? That’s really shitty luck.” Brian’s blue eyes, so like his father’s, stood out in stark relief against the surging pink in the whites. The pain there infinitely trumped his injuries.

“Brian,” she soothed, voicing a faint coo, “oh, my sweet, sweet boy. The things you have gone through, that this family has gone through…I shudder to think how we have all survived it so. And you’ve been so alone--”

Toretto’s response was as unsolicited as it was unwelcome to Constance’s ears. “He has _family_ and friends.”

She angled a sharp-edged grin at him like a bullet at her ex-husband’s chest. “Well yes, I sure you’ve become close.”

“Very.” Toretto answered again. “Extremely close.”

It was now or never, she supposed, for giving Brian the last piece of truth that would bring him back into the family permanently. Since she hadn’t yet decided if Toretto needed to make a long term acquaintance of her former residence, her next gambit would be a living and breathing one. A true ace in the hole.

Constance could feel the disturbance in the air well before she heard the soft footfalls down the hall. A cadence she knew as well as her own heartbeat.

Just shy of hooking her chin over her shoulder, she called out, “Michael, will you come here, please?”

Michael. Oh, her dear Michael, born tainted and pure and all hers to nurture and rear. Her mistakes would not be repeated, as this child—one of two shared fonts of her blood— would look to her for love and protection. His little proclivities might need a firmer hand to tame them. Just as Brian’s apparent proclivities might be quenched when faced with the consequences of missed opportunities, such as another boy who needed another father.

The light tread picked up into an excited cant and Constance turned and opened her arms to a human cannonball. The boy was such a happy child, despite his inauspicious start in life, and giggled as she snuggled him close. “Michael,” Constance smiled and brushed the top of his head with her lips, “Angel, I want you to meet someone special.”

If neither she nor Dominic had been the wiser, then they would have assumed the boy belonged to Brian. Constance opened her arms to release the boy—barely more than a baby and he toddled over. Why hadn’t she seen it before? A dead ringer, Michael was with his honey hair and aquamarine eyes.

The multitude of emotions that passed over Brian’s face sped by and landed in the direction of optimistically hopeful. “What’s your name, Buddy?”

Now Michael ducked his head, suddenly becoming shy. Like a possum flat on its back, he was far from helpless and shy. “Michael,” he answered shy and softly.

Toretto pinged his eyes from Brian to Michael back to Constance. “Is he yours?” He asked with a show of reserved hesitation.

She laughed earnestly. “There still may be some dew on the rose but certainly not enough to get him here. But I’m all he has—until now that is.”

Michael continued to gaze up at Brian, blue into blue, reservation and timidity completely forgotten. He picked up one of Brian’s hands and examined it closely, laughing at how small his hand was in comparison. “Who’re you?”

Seeing an opportunity, Constance answered quickly. “Brian’s your uncle.” For once she used the truth. The full weight of that truth would be given to Brian in the future (possibly).

Michael was a bright child and possessed the instinctual good sense to know that Brian was one of them. He drew closer to Brian without shyness, greeting him with the same enthusiasm as his favorite everything in the world. And she couldn’t have planned their meeting better, as Brian seemed to gravitate towards the boy just as well. Being that like called to like.

Toretto remained as a spectator to the family reunion. A place that gave her much satisfaction.

Brian gave her a questioning look. _Uncle_ , he mouthed over Michael’s head and she nodded approvingly. “Not to confuse him,” supplied Constance.

Destiny was in the blood. Her Michael needed a firm hand, a guardian, someone to keep him safe and bring about a settling of his blood and Brian so very much needed a family.

Michael stood on his toes to look Brian in the eye. He pointed down at Brian’s casted leg. “You hurt?” He asked, innocently.

“Yeah, bud. Had a little accident but I’m okay.”

“I make it better.” Michael promised, then latched on to Brian’s arm like a limpet. “Then we play, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, we can if my friend Dom can come.” Brian said by way of introduction for the little boy.

Constance could have smirked at the sight of Michael’s scrutinizing eye that looked far too sharp for a boy his age and size. Her grandson had the family look, that particular gleam in the eye when the ball was firmly in hand and never leaving their court. He might have been small, but make no mistake, her little angel, her light in the darkness, the last of her blood and beyond, knew that some things—family included—were not meant to shared.

Michael wrapped his arms tighter about Brian’s arm and hide his face against Brian’s body. Brian laughed just a little and looked back at Toretto with a pleading grin. “My friend’s really nice and we can teach you all kinds of stuff.”

Michael wouldn’t be swayed and Constance could’ve kissed that child.

Now she did feel a touch of pity for Toretto. Her walls hadn’t been the same since Michael had the same look last. It might be a courtesy to take him across the street before Michael decided to indulge his creativity, something that she had still not born full witness to from the start. Her fingers were too finicky to scrub and, besides Brian’s injuries, he wouldn’t be up for understanding his new nephew’s quirks just yet.

So, in that generous spirit, she turned to Dominic and asked, “Tell me,” Constance began with a smile, “would you like to see the old family home. The place has such spirit, you just might never want to leave.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
